E N D I N G S
JUNE
Cedric Fitzgerald remembered sitting in his school desk across the river in Canaan, Indiana. He was wearing the blue blazer and navy blue pants of a Saint Xavier’s student. Eighteen had appeared to be an unattainable age to him. The world would end in 1968. He simply could not see going on after that.
And yet he had. He’d gone on three decades past that, thirty years and four more added to it. Endings, Cedric was realizing that morning, were more or less artificial.
He stopped in the midst of dressing, and looked around the large bedroom he had slept in alone for sixteen years. The morning sun sent light across the floorboards.
Are you here? She did not speak. He did not need her to. Are you here? But he knew she was. She always flitted around here the way the wind in the heat ducts fluttered in and out of rooms in winter, the way the air blew the curtains, and brought in the scent of lilacs. When she came she never came alone. Evelyn came too. And Gladys. Cedric was not sure if he could tell the difference now between a spirit and a memory, between what was real and what was “made up”. A Jackie Wilson song is made up:
“Am I the man!
“Yes you’re the man!”
He thought of his own plays, of the towns and people close to his heart, made out of his heart. It hardly seemed fair to call them less real than the brain dead paper boy who had nearly tossed the Jamnia Arrow through the picture window over the Grand piano this morning.
Marilyn was here again, blowing by, resting as opposed to sitting. She never spoke, never appeared. Why? It was unnecessary. He could never see her, not the way Vaughan did and needed to. And she could not see him either. They lived together. In a heartbeat. One reason he would never marry again.
“Cedric!”
“Ralph!”
That’s Ralph downstairs. He is real. He is coming up the stairs. That tall, very solid priest who has been real in his life for forty years. Forty years?
“Are you ready, Ced?”
Cedric just stood looking at the other man with his reddish brown curls and green eyes.
“What?” Ralph grinned at Cedric.
“You don’t look horrible.”
“Thank you,” Ralph said, not knowing what to make of that.
“What I meant was,” Cedric tried to explain, “when we were kids, I never imagined knowing you as long as I’ve known you.”
“Thirty- eight years. Forty- three if you count the actual day I met you.”
“Exactly,” said Cedric. “But back then I imagined, when I could imagine being alive in forty years at all, that I’d be old and horrible looking. But neither one of us is old or horrible. Yes, a few things have dropped,” Cedric looked at his stomach and thought of his crotch. “Some considerably. But... I’m not ancient. Hardly. We probably have years left.”
“I like you when you’re this way,” Ralph said as they headed down the stairs.
Cedric heard the door to Vaughan’s room opening and slamming shut. They made way for the boys.
“We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon,” Vaughan told his father as he readjusted his book bag, and Ian and Mackenzie went out before him. In their place stood Tina and Madeleine, a week before in blue graduation gowns.... Eighteen years before there was Kevin Foster in a panic telling him how he didn’t want his baby to die, and please help him keep it. Even before that Cedric saw himself entering the house, swinging Marilyn around and setting her down, the two of them looking over this living room. He and Marilyn in their early thirties sitting in the house on 1133 Crawford talking to Evelyn.
“I’m tired,” Marilyn said. “Just for a while it would be nice not to go to New York. To sit around here sometime.”
“Well, you know you always have a house to come home to when you finish traveling,” Evelyn said. “If you finish.”
Cedric had looked at his aunt, waiting for an explanation.
“The house on Michael Street. Remember?”
Cedric did not. Not really.
“Remember when you were just a little boy, when your mother was gone for a while I asked you what house you wanted, and you pointed to this old white one?”
“I remember, but- ”
“And I told you I’d get it. I told you that,” Evelyn went on. “I promised one day when I was able to I would. And I was able to and I did. It’s been mine for years.”
“How long?” Cedric said.
“At least a decade, Dom. And now it’s yours, I imagine.”
This kitchen where he was filling two thermoses with coffee before they went to get the new priest was where he and Marilyn sat drinking coffee with Ida in those days when Aileen was still a little girl.
Ida looking around the kitchen, craning her head to observe the molding in the corners.
“You said you would have this house one day. I remember it,” she said. “And you said all sorts of people, whoever needed a home, would come up here. You’d never turn anyone away. I remember it all. And now it’s happened.”
“Well, not that last part,” Cedric noted.
“It will,” Ida shrugged. “Don’t worry.”
What Cedric had originally heard about prom night came from Aileen. How after not winning the crown, Tina had gone to Windham Street, dipped her hair in black dye, and then gone to afterprom; she and Luke dancing circles around everyone. As Aileen Foster, by all accounts an intelligent woman, wove this story for Cedric, he wondered how she could believe it. Parents believed what they wanted. Most of the time. Sometimes not to believe was just too painful.
It was from Vaughan and Madeleine that the truer tale of a trash bag dress and a corduroy tuxedo had come. This made a much better prom story though Kevin and Aileen certainly would not have approved. The one danger Cedric saw was that Ashley was more than likely to tell what had really happened.
“No she won’t,” Madeleine had said. “I can’t explain it. But she’s not the same. She was so happy with Derrick. She actually told me I looked good.”
“Wedding bells?” said Cedric.
“Hardly,” Madeleine shook her head. “It’s just that Ashley never had a man respect her... And she never really had a friend. She’s going to Belmont next year, so it’s not like she’ll be far away. From Derrick, I mean.”
“It’s a good school,” Cedric said.
Madeleine nodded, realizing that it actually was a good school.
“Ian said he might go there his
Freshmen year,” Cedric told her. “Wait for Mackenzie to graduate. But that’s a while off.”
“A year off,” Madeleine reminded her father.
Ian had gotten a job for next year. Actually the job had gotten him at the graduation party on Windham Street. Kirk, with Money hanging on his shoulder lamented while he looked at Luke, “I’m going to be losing one hell of a worker. What are you doing next year, Cane?”
Ian looked around as if there was another Cane in the garage. But Roy was not with them.
“Scratching your ass?” Kirk said. “That’s what I thought. How ‘bout you come to work at the station? Only if you want to.”
Ralph and Cedric were driving up Logan to Main, where the street hit the highway. They wanted to be in Gregoryport by eleven. This was the same road the boys were already on, in Ian’s black rumbling beast, heading for Lassador where they would spend the night with Drew and Simon.
It was tempting to say all’s well that ends well.
Nearly everyone in this strange and incomplete circle was happy. Graduation had gone beautifully. Tina had been awarded an acting scholarship for the School of the Arts in Chicago. It would be waiting for her when she got back. This was a good thing. To see Kevin and Aileen sitting there, grown up, Aileen with proper sleep and a bath in her and on her, looking like she was nothing more than thirty-five, looking like she had come through a great deal and brought two girls to this point. Ashley did not look like she had a shadow on her face, so now Cedric realized that she always had. Something had happened to that girl a long time ago he realized, and none of them had known it. But whatever the facts behind that, she wasn’t affected anymore. Or, at least, not as much.
When her name was called, and Ashley walked across the stage to receive her diploma, Derrick Todd stood up and clapped like mad. Lindsay could not have appreciated that.
Ida, beside Cedric, crossed one leg over the other and said of Derrick and Ashley, “It’s a weird match. But what good match isn’t? I like the idea of the two of them.”
To prove that most good matches were off, Cedric was sitting between an old white woman and a priest, his two oldest friends. Kevin and Aileen, very much ersatz high school celebrities were still married, and married for nearly twenty years, and both only thirty-five. Madeleine, in her blue gown, had maneuvered herself to sit by Rodder who looked very proud and handsome in his black gown. And up in the bandstand above the stage, despite how foolish a band uniform should look, there were Ian and Mackenzie, looking very sharp.
And to prove that there was still justice in the universe, Lindsay, in the midst of saying something slighting to her twin brother and his boyfriend, stumbled and fell into the pit with her saxophone. Where she broke her leg.
After they had returned from the hospital where Lindsay was staying the night, Ashley, Tina, Mackenzie and Ian were sitting together, and Ashley said, “It’s a shame what happened to poor Lindsay. It really hasn’t been her year.”
Suddenly Madeleine began to snigger. And then so did Tina.
“What?” Ashley said. “I was serious.”
Tina and Madeleine burst into fits of laughter, and then Ian and Mackenzie’s lips trembled and they began laughing too. Now Ashley buried her face in her hands and started laughing.
“It’s the funniest joke I’ve ever told,” she said. “And it wasn’t supposed to be.”
Aileen slept early that night, exhausted. Kevin came in a little after her. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. She watched him strip to his boxers, and then crawl into bed beside her. He reached up and flicked off the light.
“I feel like I can rest after eighteen years,” said Aileen. “Which is a lie. They tell you it ends after eighteen. But that’s a lie, isn’t it? It doesn’t ever end, does it?”
“Still, I think you can rest a little bit,” Kevin told her. He buried himself in the covers. “Like, for example, I think you could work a little less.”
“I can’t go to Windmill and tell them I’m only going to work a few hours a day.”
“I know. That’s why you should quit.”
“What?” Aileen sat up in bed. She debated turning the light on to get a better look at her husband’s face.
“I mean,” Kevin went on, “think of what a better job you can get when you finally do have your degree. And you’ll finally be able to get it when you can actually go to class.
“Now... Now,” he sat up in the dark, and stumbled over his declaration. “I’m your husband, Aily. I’m the man of the house. And I’m firm on this: I’m firm! You’re gonna quit Windmill and go to school. Or... or else.”
“Oh, shut up, Kevin,” Aileen kissed her husband, and wrapped her arms around him. “You’re difficult, and you’re weird as hell, but I love you. I do. Just this once you’ll be my lord and master, and I’ll do whatever you say. I love you. Now let’s go to sleep.”
So, Cedric supposed rightly that it would be tempting to say, “All’s well that ends well.”
They headed down the road, and the town gave way to country, and Ralph’s car sped up heading north. It would be tempting to say it: “All’s well...”
Except that nothing seemed to be ending any time soon.
“IT’S AMAZING HOW MUCH OF Ohio there is,” Ian marveled. He and Mackenzie had struggled to operate the convertible top on his car. It had not been down in twenty years, and the wind was blowing back Mackenzie’s hair as he looked on the long green fields dotted with red barns, clumped with cattle and horses. Now and again a viaduct that went in both directions to towns unknown and unseen stretched over their heads.
In the back seat, Vaughan was stretched out sleeping, his guitar clutched to his chest. He reminded Mackenzie of a musical vampire.
“Make sure no bugs get in our friend’s mouth,” Ian said.
Mackenzie looked back, tapped Vaughan on the chest three times, and the boy’s mouth closed. It was an old trick Mackenzie had learned years ago.
They drove northeast, and it was over an hour before the road passed the first town they’d heard Drew or Simon speak of. This was Glencastle. Drew had said it was best to drive right into it and catch the road that led to Regalville. None of these towns seem to be much different from each other, but they were all smaller than Jamnia, which surprised Ian. He hadn’t thought any place could be smaller. Except maybe Bashan. Glencastle, however, was an old fashioned city all made out of stone with a huge clock tower and a sweet little downtown.
Twenty minutes north of Regalville the road lifted over suburbs and subdivisions, the chlorine filled pools of families living around cul de sacs. Tall buildings rose in the distance and the road, filled with bumps, lifted up and took them into it. Here there were cities: Hurston, Seville, Lassador. Certainly they were no Chicago, but maybe a Fort Wayne, maybe a Cleveland, definitely bigger than Jamnia.
“Wake up, Vaughan,” Ian said, “Now, I am lost.”
Vaughan crawled out of sleep, eyes squinting while he clutched his guitar, and looked around. The highway was four lanes wide. Beneath them was city.
“Are we there?”
“Sort of,” Ian said.
“Just follow the road,” Mackenzie told him. “We got directions.”
Vaughan, reaching past Mackenzie into the glove compartment, pulled out the directions.
“Wouldn’t it be funny if they blew out of my hand?” Vaughan noted.
“No, not really,” Mackenzie said.
“It says,” Vaughan drawled, squinting through his glasses, and trying to get back the vision the sudden sunlight had taken when he awoke, “Take the highway into Lassador. Get off where the sign says Mason Street. Stay on Mason Street until it turns into Rawlston Road. Get off of Rawlston on Dorr Road. Stay on Taylor Road.”
Vaughan added. “Simon lives on Taylor Road.”
“I know that,” Ian said.
“Oh, stop snapping at me,” Vaughan told him. “If you knew it, why the hell did you wake me up? Kenzie, take this note!”
And with that, Vaughan went back to sleep.
Mackenzie woke him up however when they were coming down onto Mason Street. Beyond the tall buildings a beautiful lake was sparkling, and Kenzie said, “I wonder if it’s connected to Erie.”
For a long time as they traveled down Mason, with its large but lonely seeming buildings in this strange, half-empty post-industrial Midwest city, they could see the lake in the distance, through the skyscrapers. The city died out, and they were on a residential road. It practically took them to Taylor Road. It was fairly easy to find Simon’s house then; one of many split levels set back on a green yard from graveled streets with no sidewalks, SUV’s and station wagons in their driveways.
“We thought you’d never get here,” Drew said to them.
“Here, let me show you my parents,” Simon offered, as if they were toys or utensils.
“We saw the sweetest lake,” Ian said.
“Lake Garanette,” Simon told him. “The best thing about Lassador. We’ll go there later. How’s that sound?”
Vaughan had heard Drew and Simon talking about having to come out, how they lived in secret. Now, as Vaughan watched Drew, red headed and athletic, and his taller significant other in faded jeans with thinnish hair, he marveled at the power of denial some parents had. How could Mr. and Mrs. Pendergast mistake Drew and Simon for anything less than what they were? Everyone had to know. They touched hands, stroked hair, laughed gently at one another’s mistakes. If Drew rose to get something, and Simon was closer, he bade Drew sit down with a gentle gesture, and got it himself. When one was talking, the other would sit and gaze a little lovestruck at the speaker. They had ceased to hide anything. Years had eroded the care, and others, not wanting to see the obvious, must have built up a blindness, a sort of spiritual, self imposed cataracts.
Or maybe it was that, never having had an experience of that life, no one around the boys could even recognize it when they saw it. After all, it was clear Simon and Drew were the best of friends, but they behaved in a way completely different from say, Madeleine and Rodder. They weren’t like a man and woman, so how could the Pendergasts know?
They got ready to go to the lake. Drew said they should stop at his house to meet his mom and dad, because they’d be staying with the Marshes tonight anyway.
“You guys should take Ian’s convertible,” Mr. Marsh said, having only heard of it and not knowing what it looked like since they’d come to the house in Simon’s car. “And then you all can hang out of it and impress all the girls.”
Vaughan thought this was so funny on so many scores that he had to get up and leave the room to have a good laugh. Ian turned red. Mr. Marsh was completely oblivious to reality, especially the reality of his own son. In the bathroom off the kitchen, Vaughan heard Mrs. Marsh, an attractive red headed woman in her forties say quietly, “Oh, now, Dan, I think they’d rather be with each other than worry about girls. Everyone’s not into girls all the time.”
On the other side of the bathroom door Vaughan stopped laughing. There was something in the way Mrs. Marsh spoke that told Vaughan how, unlike most women, she knew exactly what her son was about, and was completely unfazed.
THE END
